Authentic Cosmopolitanism: Love, Sin, and Grace in the Christian University

by R.J. Snell, Steven D. Cone

Humans are lovers, and yet a good deal of pedagogical theory, Christian or otherwise, assumes an anthropology at odds with human nature, fixed in a model of humans as “thinking things.” Turning to Augustine, this book provides a normative vision for Christian higher education. A phenomenological reappropriation of human subjectivity reveals an authentic order to love, even when damaged by sin, and loves, made authentic by grace, allow the intellectually, morally, and religiously converted person to attain an integral unity. Properly understanding the integral relation between love and the fullness of human life overcomes the split between intellectual and moral formation, allowing transformed subjects -authentic lovers - to live, seek, and work towards the values of a certain kind of cosmopolitanism. Christian universities exist to make cosmopolitans, properly understood, namely, those persons capable of living authentically. In other words, this text gives a full-orbed account of human flourishing, rooted in a phenomenological account of the human as basis for the mission of the university.

Table of Contents

Table of
Preface
Thinkers or A Brief Introduction
Part The Order of Authentic Love and
Intellectual Conversion
1 Noetic Exegesis and the Authentic Intellect
2 Martin Heidegger, Charles Taylor, and the Caring
Person
3 Bernard Lonergan, Intellectual Conversion, and
Authentic Love
Part Educating for Moral and Religious
Conversion
4 Disorder and The Effects of Sin
5 The Graciousness of Moral and
Religious Conversion
Part Educating for Authentic Humans
and the Order of Love
6 Value Forming Moral Agents
7 Value, Justice, Authenticity
An Education for Our Time
Bibliography

Genres: Philosophy

200 pages, Paperback

First published February 28, 2013

Reviews

[Donald Brooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a really good book, especially for the last half or so. I wish a book on Cosmopolitanism at large and not just for the Christian University would be written by this thoughtful author.